WhatsApp Order Automation
Your customers already order by WhatsApp. Keep the chat, automate the transcription — orders land in your ERP confirmed.
What it does
Restaurant owners, shop managers and site foremen order from their phone, in the evening, in whatever words come naturally. The pipeline receives the message, works out what they want, confirms it in-chat, and posts the order to your ERP — while your team sleeps.
- Text, voice notes, photos. A meaningful share of WhatsApp orders arrive as audio or a photo of a handwritten list. All three parse into the same structured order.
- History-aware parsing. "The usual, plus two boxes of tomatoes" resolves against that customer's last orders — context no form-based tool has.
- In-chat confirmation. The customer approves a structured summary with one tap. No app to install, no portal to learn.
- ERP posting on approval. Confirmed orders land as clean records, with the chat thread as the audit trail.
How it runs at Oido
WhatsApp is a channel on the platform, not a separate product: the same agent brain handles email orders and Slack questions, n8n workflows do the ERP writes, and exceptions escalate to your team with full context. Build it yourself or have us run it with you — either way the number, the workflows and the data are yours.
What to expect
The win is measured in evenings: orders that used to wait for morning transcription now confirm themselves in minutes. Watch the zero-touch rate and the correction rate per customer — both improve as the catalog matching learns your customers' shorthand. Full walkthrough: WhatsApp order automation for wholesale.
Where it fits
Built for food distribution, wholesale trade and restaurants and catering suppliers. Pairs naturally with invoice processing on the outbound side.
Your customers are already messaging you. Talk to us about automating the other half of the conversation.
FAQ
How does WhatsApp order automation work?
A WhatsApp Business API number receives the message. An AI agent parses it against that customer's order history and your catalog, replies in-chat with a structured summary — products, quantities, prices, delivery date — and on a thumbs-up posts the order to your ERP.
Does it handle voice notes and photos?
Yes. Voice notes go through speech-to-text plus LLM parsing; photos of handwritten lists go through OCR. Low-confidence transcriptions route to a review queue instead of posting a guess.
Do my customers have to change how they order?
No — that's the point. Forcing wholesale buyers onto a B2B portal usually fails; the portal loses to the chat thread. Customers keep messaging in their own words, and the automation lives behind the number.
Can it resolve orders like 'the usual'?
Yes. The agent sees the customer's past orders, so standing orders and shorthand resolve correctly — and anything genuinely ambiguous gets asked back in the same chat.
What about order changes and cancellations?
Handled in the same thread: the agent amends the ERP record and reconfirms. Everything is logged, so your team can always see what was agreed and when.